His armor broken, his weapons captured, himself wounded, the old man sat with bowed head, too weak and crushed to quit the field until the sermon was finished. Then, unheeded, he threaded his way out of the throng. Awe at last stole over him as he rode slowly along the quiet lanes, with his hat slouched low over his face; and he was conscious of a deeper meaning in his favorite texts of Scripture than he had hitherto felt. Presently, however, he returned to his own habitual and (to him) more reassuring reasoning. "That fellow seems to think the whole ocean of God's eternal purpose and decree can be caught up and held in one little pint cup; and in his self-confident ignorance he looks upon the Lord's ways as though they were a child's reading-book which any man could learn at once. Even if there be truth in what he says, the simple gospel is too mild and too broad to be used thus freely. It would make the road to salvation toe easy for the transgressor. The Westminster Confession and the Shorter and Longer Catechisms are the skillful condensation and concentration of all Scripture truth. They are the framework of the church; and one might as well try to build a house without beams and rafters as to try to hold a church together without creeds and covenants and confessions of faith." He said nothing to any one of that sermon in the grove; but the next few weeks he searched the Scriptures as he had never done before. At first he sought to find texts to bolster up his preaccepted tenets, but as the weeks went by, and he grew more and more absorbed in the search, he began to study the Bible impartially and comprehensively; and, instead of being satisfied with fragments of truth taken here and there from disconnected texts, he studied the different passages with reference to their connected meaning. Reading, studying, pondering thus, his reason and judgment could not but admit the force of what Barton Stone and the other "New Light" ministers were teaching. Yes, his reason and judgment were at last convinced; yet this did not produce submission and a desire to acknowledge his error, but rather a feeling of resistance and defiance. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CUP OF COLD WATER In August of that same summer, Hiram Gilcrest, the man of strong nerve and iron constitution, whose boast it had been that he had never known a day's real sickness, was stricken down with disease, and after a few days of wasting illness, he was muttering in the delirium of typhus fever.